


Those You've Known

by felixturner



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Accidental Self Harm, Angst, Gen, M/M, Past Character Death, Past Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 22:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1566182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felixturner/pseuds/felixturner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A disfigured Will Graham reflects (oh, the pun) on a time when he wasn’t the disfigured one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those You've Known

**Author's Note:**

> Past Will/Chilton. Spoilers for Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal the TV show. It's a weird mix of all of those realities so I apologize if it doesn't make complete sense timing wise.

Being disfigured is a weird thing. Mental disfiguration was something that Will Graham had learned to deal with and master from a young age. It was easy to hide when something was wrong on the inside. Well, maybe not easy, but you certainly didn’t get children pointing at you and laughing or being scared while you simply walked by. When you were physically disfigured, it was a completely different story. You couldn’t hide your entire face every time you went out, you couldn’t mask the scars and misshapen cheekbones and nose.

His last therapist had told him to wear his new face proudly, that it showed how strong he was for surviving what he had.

He’d never walked out of a session quicker.

How could he be proud of being ripped apart by a maniac with a knife who’d been sent after him by someone who had once been one of his closest friends? He almost wished he hadn’t survived it all, and that certainly wasn’t something worth being proud of either.

Returning to Florida was supposed to help him forget, make everything go back to normal. The sun and warmth will make you feel better, Molly assured him. But they didn’t. Nothing did. Breaking all of the mirrors in their house had helped momentarily, the glass cutting sharply into his knuckles, the warm and sticky blood dripping down his hands a welcome distraction from the reflection he couldn’t stand to see anymore and now wouldn’t have to. But even that didn’t help when Molly left because of it, accusing him of being unstable and dangerous as she took his stepson and his dogs - his fucking dogs of all things.

It had been weeks since she’d left and the mirrors were still shattered, glass littering the floors underneath the now empty frames. He figured he should probably clean it up but with no one else in the house to get hurt, it wasn’t exactly a priority.

He glanced down at a large shard and visibly shuddered at the face that looked back at him. He wondered if it’ll ever get easier, if there would ever be anything that makes this any simpler to deal with. And then suddenly he remembers being on the other end of this scenario. It was years ago, so long ago that it almost feels like someone else’s memory. But he’s positive it belongs to him, or at least used to.

He remembers when Chilton was finally released, both from the hospital and from prison. Of course they’d never found him guilty of being the Chesapeake Ripper - he was a vegan for fuck’s sake. The bullet that had gone through his cheek had done it’s fair share of damage, but it hadn’t killed him and it hadn’t permanently disabled him. The scars, however, were a disability of their own according to Frederick.

Will remembers more vividly now how angry Chilton had been. He remembers how he’d refused to look in mirrors, refused to go out, refused to believe Will when he’d said that he was still beautiful. So Will had resorted to other tactics to comfort him. It had been a struggle at first, but eventually Frederick had melted against the soft touches and gentles caresses. Instead of flinching away and arguing, he gave in to every gentle brush of lips against his scars, every softly murmured praise about how gorgeous he was, how perfect and beautiful and strong he was. And Will had meant every word of it, every praise and every soft touch and everything he’d whispered between them at night as they’d slowly moved together, finding comfort and solace in someone who was almost as damaged as the other.

Up until the day Frederick Chilton died, he knew he was loved and cared for and beautiful, despite what had happened to him, and more importantly, he believed it. Will refused to rest until he had.

Will slid to the floor, ignoring the sharp stings of glass cutting and slicing as he crumpled in on himself. When he died, he wouldn’t have any of that. When Will died, instead of it being a thing that took him from the ones he loved and the ones that loved him, it would just be a sudden and sharp relief. He didn’t have anyone left who loved him. They were all chased away or dead and the acceptance of that reality was more crippling than anything that had or could happen to his face.


End file.
